


What Fate Daniel Jackson

by jdjunkie



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Episode Related, Episode Tag, Gen, Post Episode s01e11 Fire and Water
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-25
Updated: 2014-10-25
Packaged: 2018-02-22 13:41:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2509820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jdjunkie/pseuds/jdjunkie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maybe their unlikely friendship was helping them both turn a few pages. Maybe letting Daniel find his own way was a different way of showing he cared.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Fate Daniel Jackson

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Princess of Geeks (Princess)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Princess/gifts).



“Knock, knock.”

Jack. Leaning against the frame of Daniel’s open office door, looking for all the world as though he had come across the lab by total chance during a meandering ramble around the SGC.

Daniel looked up from his book-strewn bench, using his forefinger to keep his place in the dense text he’d been lost in. He’d been reading for two hours solid. He had a headache. He squinted in Jack’s general direction.

“Fraiser wanted to see you,” Jack said, pushing off from the doorway and sauntering in, hands in pockets.

“Yes.”

“Did you see her?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“And she gave me painkillers for the headaches.” Daniel peered down at Borger’s work on cuneiform sign lists. He was reading it in the original German. He generally felt more comfortable with texts in their original language, even if it made life harder. He had a knack of making life harder for himself. Or so Jack said.

Jack’s eyes darted to the bottle of pills on the desk. It was sitting beside a half-empty coffee mug and was partly hidden by a weighty French tome on the birth of the writing system Nem had used to communicate with Daniel.

“You haven’t taken any, have you?” Jack’s tone wasn’t exactly accusatory, more resigned.

“I will, I will. I just want to get this finished. It’s hard to properly assess the phonetic and logographic values when your brain is dulled by drugs.”

“Daniel,” Jack picked up the top book from the most obviously unstable pile and studied the title on the spine. “Your brain’s already dulled by the sushi monster’s headsucker thing. That is why you need the painkillers in the first place.”

Daniel reached up and took the book from Jack’s hands. It was old and precious and rare. Jack was handling it like a second-hand paperback. Daniel ran his hands absently over the worn cover. As always, the feel of a book in his hands was warm and comforting. It grounded him, and right now, feeling grounded was more than necessary. It wasn’t easy, knowing that everyone had given you up for dead. They’d closed up his apartment and been through his stuff. They’d even held a wake. He was still adjusting to the uneasy sideways glances and curious stares of staff he passed in the SGC corridors.

“I’m fine. Janet warned me there might be headaches and there are. They’ll pass. I just want to work.”

Jack leaned against the bench, arms crossed. To anyone else, Jack would have seemed to be the poster boy for relaxed; the fact that he was here at all told Daniel that wasn’t the case. “Take the damned pills, Daniel. Whatever it is you’re working on will keep.”

Daniel’s irritation spiked. He’d been angry and unsettled since coming back from the apparent dead. Jack’s trademark gruff concern was the last thing he wanted just now. “Um, if it’s okay with you, and actually even if it’s not, I don’t need mothering. Contrary to what you seem to believe I am a fully functioning adult capable of making my own decisions. I’ll take the pills when I’m ready.”

He knew he sounded pissy and that he’d probably just defeated his own argument; he kind of sounded like a recalcitrant eight year old rather than a fully functioning adult. He avoided looking at Jack and concentrated on the book in his hands instead.

“Daniel. I get it.” No trace of anger; a hint of tender understanding.

Daniel sighed and closed his eyes against the growing thud of pain that was insinuating its way from his neck and shoulders into the base of his skull and making its home there. “No, Jack, I don’t think you do,” he said on a weary exhalation of breath.

“Look. There’s nothing more you can do for Nem. He lost his mate and that’s sad but at least you gave him some kind of ... closure.”

Daniel pinched the bridge of his nose. He was so tired.

“Closure.” He hated that word. It didn’t mean anything and yet it was bandied about as though it solved everything.

“He has an answer,” Jack said, over-patiently.

That wasn’t it. That _really_ wasn’t it but he was too exhausted to explain. The sensible response would be to tell Jack that, yes, he was right; at least Nem knew what fate Omoroca. But Daniel always took the harder road.

“Yes. The thing is, I’m just not sure it was the right one.”

“Daniel?” Jack’s eyes narrowed.

Daniel shrugged. “What if I only told him what I did because I thought it would ease his suffering?”

Jack shifted until he was perched hipshot on the corner of the desk. “Wasn’t Nem sure that the memory was in your head somewhere? And wouldn’t the headsucker know that you weren’t telling the truth?”

“I don’t know. And I don’t know if I _was_ telling the truth. As of this moment, I don’t remember Omoroca’s story at all and if I don’t recall it now, who’s to say I ever did? Perhaps I was snatching at fragments of the story, bits and pieces of the tale that I put together hoping it would give Nem what he needed to hear. And who knows how the alien ... headsucker ... technology responds to human physiology. Would it be able to separate proper memory from simple thought?”

Jack nodded, assessing eyes seeing more than Daniel was comfortable with. “That’s a whole lotta coulda woulda shoulda.”

Daniel shrugged. “I don’t know. I keep ... second-guessing myself. My actions and motivations. Not just with this mission. I nearly got us both killed on Ernest’s planet. I should have stopped you eating Kynthia’s wedding cake. ” He studied a scratch on his desk closely. “Truth is, I’m thinking I’m more of a hindrance than a help. And that is not some kind of pathetic plea for reassurance. I’m just telling you how it seems to me.”

He sensed rather than saw Jack’s body stiffen. The man had an undeniable physical presence. Daniel had become attuned to it; the tense shoulders and set jaw that meant he was angry; the pursed lips that said more than any verbal rebuke ever could.

“So ... what I said at your memorial service, and, yes, I’m aware how bizarre that sounds, was a pack of lies?”

Daniel ran his thumb over the scratch. He liked imperfections, in objects as well as people. They spoke of history and that something was useful. Loved even, sometimes. He shied away from the metaphor.

“I didn’t say that.”

“I said that you mattered, Daniel. Voice, conscience, yadda. I’m sure there are times we all question our actions and motivations. I’m pretty sure Teal’c has in the past and I damned well know I have. I know you well enough to know that you do what you believe is right. You should never second-guess that. In fact, I insist on it. ”

Daniel quirked a smile at his bench and continued to rub at the scratch, which was looking less obvious with every stroke. “You speaking as my CO or my friend?”

“I can’t be both?”

“Well, I always knew you were one but it was nice to hear you’re other, too.”

“You were dead at the time. Don’t get used to me saying nice things. I have a reputation to maintain.”

Daniel huffed a quiet laugh and it eased the tension that had built on the back of his voiced insecurities. He realized he wouldn’t have told anyone else about his doubts. Telling Jack seemed natural. “I just want to see if I can find out if I was telling Nem the truth, that’s all.” He turned his gaze to the books on his bench. This mattered to him, even if there was no going back and telling Nem the truth if it turned out Daniel had been wrong. He thought Jack understood that much but he still half expected Jack to drag him bodily from his lab and demand that he eat something, or perhaps go home and sleep. That was how Jack showed he cared.

So when Jack said a soft, “Okay,” Daniel was thrown. He looked up and tried not to grimace at the pain that flared even more fiercely in his head as he did so. Wincing, he saw there was pain in Jack’s gaze, too. Daniel was momentarily stunned to see it there. Jack was an emotionally closed book most of the time, just as Daniel was. Maybe their unlikely friendship was helping them both turn a few pages. Maybe letting Daniel find his own way was a different way of showing he cared.

“Okay,” Jack said, again, a little more certainly. “Just ... the answers aren’t always there. You know? However much we might want them to be.”

Daniel swallowed hard and had to fight the hot rush of tears that, out of nowhere, threatened to spill.

“I get it,” Daniel said, summoning a half-smile he hoped would reassure Jack enough to send him on his way.

Jack nodded and matched Daniel’s half-smile with one of his own. He pushed off the desk and headed for the door.

“Pills, Daniel. When you’re ready, of course,” he said, as he reached the corridor.

Daniel closed his eyes against the need to have the last word. Smiling wryly, he fixed his gaze on the text before him and placed the plastic pill container where he’d be sure to see it when he was done.

 

ends


End file.
